2/4/25

 Happy Birthday to Ethan! 22 years ago he officially grew our family. He has offered us laughter, sadness, anger and lots and lots of learning opportunities.

Ethan woke up feeling much better this morning. He wanted to go to work (eye roll). He is an adult and in charge of his own choices.

Paul felt like crap and came home mid day. I didn’t want to be around him so I bailed and went upstairs. I worked in Avery’s bedroom with the door shut and less “sick” in the air.

Ethan’s transplant team strongly urged him to get bloodwork, chest Xray and a trip to urgent care. I strongly encouraged Ethan to go. 

I did some research to see if there was an urgent care with a lab and X-ray within the urgent care. I found one close by. Turns out, all the other sick people found it too. 

When we arrived there were about 10 people in front of us. We had our masks on but the “sick” air was DENSE and I didn’t want to touch anything.

Nothing says “You are an adult” like working on your birthday, leaving work and going to urgent care, AND missing dinner because you were at urgent care for FOUR hours. 

The poor doctor. Ethan isn’t just another patient with a cold. Going over his medications alone can take ages. The doctor listened to Ethan’s lungs and heard wheezing which is what I expected. I couldn’t listen to his lungs this morning because my stethoscope was in the car that Paul left at work yesterday. Isn’t the car where you keep your stethoscope?

The doctor wanted to give Ethan an albuterol treatment. I did tell her that albuterol interacts with two of his medications (one of his rejection medications) and I declined that idea. I only knew this because I looked up if we could use his inhaler with the same medication this morning.

I also let her know that Ethan is not a typical patient and follows ZERO medical rules. After she left the room Ethan and I started to recall all the things his body didn’t follow the rules on. We laughed over how many times he has just done the opposite of what is expected.

Urgent care took a chest x-ray and found Ethan has pneumonia in his left lung lobe. The doctor had to call STRONG pharmacy for a medication consult due to most antibiotics conflicting with the rejection medications.  She settled on one antibiotic. It can reduce the efficacy of one of his rejection medications but he is on 3 so he still has some coverage.

The doctor wanted Ethan to start an antibiotic medication tonight which would require us to go to a new pharmacy 20 minutes away, enter all of Ethan’s existing medications blah blah blah. What a pain in the ass!

I want to run this medication by the transplant team to see if they agree and if we need to support Ethan in a different way with his rejection medications. 

After verbalizing what I wanted to do, the doctor said it would be ok to wait until tomorrow to consult with the team.

The bright side is that I got to spend time with Ethan on his birthday. We were talking and I was feeling kinda bad that his birthday was so crummy.

“Hey, at least I am not in the hospital for this birthday.” Perspective! We talked about on his 18 th birthday he was still learning to swallow. He had some ice cream cake and then vomited it up.

Ethan plans to go to the lab before work tomorrow.

Happy Birthday Ethan….You have pneumonia! We are delighted it’s not worse.